Reward
by Katsuargi
Summary: At the end of his life, the Tenth doesn't want to die... but is that really what he wants? The Universe is unkind, uncaring, but the people that live in it can be Amazing. One shot, slight rewrite / addendum to "End of Time. Pt. Two."


"I don't want to die." His voice cried out to no one in particular, but everyone in general. The universe. Everything. He had done so much, saved all of time and space, saved the earth by itself so very many times. He had loved, he had lost, and at the end he was all alone. Even now, as he was here dying, he was alone. He had said his goodbyes. They had understood. All but the most important of them.

With everything he had given up, everything he had done, where was his reward. 'The universe doesn't care. Even this once. I don't want to die...at least, I don't want to die alone.'

He stumbled and fell backwards, but rather than landing on the cold, if supporting, ground of his beloved TARDIS, he instead found himself falling backwards into a pair of arms. Some slight bewilderment came over him for a moment as he turned to look back.

"You're not alone. I'd never let you be alone. Not now." Her voice was like a summer day, filling him with it's warmth. The one he hadn't gotten to say goodbye too. Not really. But there was power in that voice. Far more than she should have.

"You can't be here. The walls..." He started, catching his chest and holding back pain.

"I was there for you when you died last time. Did you think I'd let you die alone? Ever die alone? I see the past, the present and the future, all presents. All futures. I see all things and everything in my own line, and the line of the one who allowed me this life."

Her eyes were filled with gold, her body alive and electric with power. This wasn't his Rose...but at the same time, it's when they were closest, when she was closest to him. She was still at that moment so long ago, at moments throughout history leaving the trail for her to find the Doctor, for her to become the Bad Wolf. But she was here too.

"You are not alone." She said simply, reassuringly.

He nodded, and smiled through the pain, raising a hand to rest on the side of her face. "I'm glad your here. I said goodbye to you in my own way, but it wasn't enough."

She smiled at him, an odd expression on someone so powerful. "I know. I remembered. I followed you from there and that's how I found you here. But there's someone else you didn't say goodbye too, someone else that should be here."

The was a flash and she was there, a blonde girl that he had thought dead. Or perhaps she was, and Bad Wolf was simply pulling her from a time before her death...but that wasn't right. Her hair was longer, her face a little harder. But that joy and wonder, those looks he saw in his own face and those of his companions, where still there. That look flickered to surprise, shock, and then to realization and concern. She was at his other side holding his hand in but a moment. "Hello Dad."

He couldn't help but smile. At the end of his life, Rose and his daughter, Jenny, were with him. The two most important women in his life.

"I guess it's not worth asking how you knew about her."

Bad wolf, Rose, shook her head. "I was there, as I've always been with you..." She paused, considering for a moment. "She's as much mine as yours."

That drew a look of confusion from both of them. "That's impossible. It was a genetic replication from a cell sample producing an accelerated life form from culti..."

"Doctor. Shut up." A caring look on her face. "I knew in all the time that I've known you how I've felt about you. I knew when we were separated, I knew when you left me on that other world for good. And I knew how you felt about he. We could never be together, and I knew that as well. But that doesn't mean that I couldn't have what I wanted, what we wanted. Something lasting born of the both of us, something good a pure. I was the reason you went to that place, in that time."

He swallowed. He had to think about that. She had manipulated time and space, and less importantly, the machine in order to produce their child.

Jenny's reaction was a little more straight forwards. She smiled that wonderful smile of hers, and grabbed both of them in a hug, only a minor grunt of pain from the doctor protesting the action.

"And now, Doctor. Your reward, a gift from me, from time and space, to all of us."

Things flashed before his eyes. A life that he never had, a life that he would never have, but a life that he now had all the same. Visions of him, Rose and Jenny. The adventures they had, the places they visited. Rose's eventual death. Jenny and him carrying on. Eventually him on his deathbed, finally wounded beyond what even he could come back from Jenny at his side and contentment of his face knowing, knowing that a wonderful part of him continued on.

Back in reality, this reality and time, he sighed. He had just lived an entire, wonderful life with the two women here, and they had lived it with him. And now he was dying, dying again, and they were with him still. "Will you remember?"

Rose nodded, a sad smile on her face, tears down her face. "I'll remember, I'll know. I'll never forget, and before you start, no, I won't ever tell you, but you already know that as I never did."

He smiled at Jenny. "You're going to be extraordinary, amazing, and all those wonderful words I don't have time to say..."

He smiled. "Rose Tyler. Thank you." And then there was a burst of light as his conciousness slipped away, as his form started to change.

Rose looked at Jenny and took her hand. "I've used up so much strength. Much more and I'll burn this body out. Saying goodbye, just to say goodbye, has taken everything I had. I have to send you home, and I have to go back to the Doctor."

Jenny sighed. "I won't see you again, will I, mom?"

She smiled in response. "To quote someone from the Doctors future, someone important; "Spoilers." But know that I'm always with you, in all time, even if you can't see me."

A flash and Jenny was back on her adventures, and Rose Tyler was back, destroying a Dalek fleet so many years ago.


End file.
